Meet Facebooks new privacy mascot

Facebook has unveiled a new feature that helps you keep track of what you're sharing on the social network. By Stephanie Baumer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Facebook users are due for a digital checkup, and a friendly blue dinosaur is here to help.

The social network unveiled a new feature this week that allows users to do a “privacy checkup,” ensuring that they know how their personal information is being shared on the site.

Guided by a blue dinosaur pulling levers, the checkup feature starts by displaying the share settings for your Facebook posts and gives you the option to change them. For example, maybe all your posts are being shared publicly, but you’d prefer that only your Facebook friends have access to them.

The checkup then gives you a look at the apps that have access to your Facebook information and whether your usage of those apps is displayed publicly. You can change those display options and delete the apps you’re no longer using.

Finally, the checkup gives you a look at the personal information you’ve got on the site—your email address, work history and so forth—and lets you adjust the display settings for that information if needed.

“We know you come to Facebook to connect with friends, not with us,” Facebook product manager Paddy Underwood wrote in a blog post. “But we also know how important it is to be in control of what you share and who you share with.”

You can access the feature by logging into Facebook, clicking the lock icon in the upper-right-hand corner and then clicking “Privacy Checkup.”

The checkup only takes a minute or two.

Of course, none of this will stop Facebook from mining your personal information for targeted ads, but you can at least rest assured that your party photos won’t show up at the top of your boss’s News Feed.